Letter: Why support USCB campus for tourism?
In your Sunday, April 10, editorial you stated “too much of its (Beaufort County) local economy is based on tourism and service industry jobs that don’t attract college-educated, young professionals.”
Yet Hilton Head Island’s mayor and Town Council tell us that the University of South Carolina Beaufort needs a campus off Pope Ave directed to the tourism industry at a high cost of tax dollars and those who pay them. This was after the USCB chancellor was unable to provide the council with the number of students enrolled in the program or the percentage of students who dropped out of the program after enrolling or the number of students who graduated in that field, according to your reporting.
At that time, the Packet supported the campus development. Is the editorial a change of position for the Packet as the buildings are under demolition and the traffic circle is still under study?
The economic facts of the cost to the citizens is obvious. The facts of why the past and present mayors, the past and present council and the Packet supported a project of this magnitude for a very limited number of low-paying jobs is far from obvious.
Many factual questions have been asked and gone unanswered by the Packet, the mayors and council. Why?
Scott Gustafson
Hilton Head Island
This story was originally published April 15, 2016 at 5:14 PM with the headline "Letter: Why support USCB campus for tourism?."